


Reflections

by mothicalcreatures (laelreenia)



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Bigender Alex Summers, Canonical Character Death, Darwin Lives, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Trans Male Character, Trans Scott Summers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 01:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15159302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laelreenia/pseuds/mothicalcreatures
Summary: Sometimes all you have are photographs.





	Reflections

Face in the Glass

 

Alex stares at the picture without really seeing it. His eyes are more focused on his reflection in the glass than the picture behind it. He doesn’t need to look at the picture to know it by heart anyway. Finally though, he blinks, letting his eyes refocus on the picture. He looks so young. They all do. They were just children after all. He tries not to think too hard about who’s missing from the picture, but he always does. It makes Alex wish he’d had the forethought to bring some of the old polaroids he had from the compound.

The picture on the wall his him, Raven, Hank, and Sean, standing in front of the hedges out behind the, now, Xavier Institute. No Angel. No Darwin. 

“Hey.”

Alex nearly jumps out of his skin, but it’s only Scott, returned from Hank’s lab with shiny new glasses.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Scott says. 

“It’s alright,” Alex says. “I was… pretty well lost in my thoughts. If you hadn’t said something I probably wouldn’t have noticed you standing there.” Alex turns back to the picture. “How are the glasses?”

“Good. Is that from when you went here?” Scott asks, gesturing to the picture.

“I wouldn’t call it _going_ here,” Alex says. “It wasn’t a school then, but yeah, that’s me, Raven, and Hank.” He points to each of them as he says their name.

Alex heads Scott shift next to him. “Who’s the ginger kid?” 

“That’s Sean.”

“Does he teach here too?”  
Alex shakes his head. “No. He… died… less than a year after this photo was taken.”

“Oh.”

Alex sighs. “It is what it is.” He hates to say it, but he’s used to losing people at this point. He also hates to think that bringing Scott to the Institute might mean losing him too.

 

Sentimental Old Fools

 

Hank stares at the polaroids that Raven has just handed to him. “These are…”

“From the compound,” Raven finishes softly.

Hank sinks into his desk chair. He brushes his fingers gently over a picture of Sean and Alex, doubled over laughing. “Where did you find these?”

“Scott gave them to me,” Raven says. “Alex had them.”

Hank gingerly lays the photos on the desk as Raven holds out an envelope to him. “Scott kept some of the ones of Alex,” Raven continues, “but he gave the rest to us.”

Hank’s hands are trembling as he carefully dumps the rest of the photos onto his desk.

“I thought we could frame some of them. To replace the one that got destroyed.”

Hank nods. “Yes, and we could include Angel and Darwin this time.”

 

 

Young Man

 

Scott has been avoiding unpacking for days now. He hasn’t had the time he tells himself, but he knows that’s not true. He’s been avoiding it, because he doesn’t want to face the fact that, among his own things,there is a small collection of things that had belonged to Alex. 

Scott makes a point to not look at all the unpacked boxes as he starts on his homework, but he can’t focus. His mind keeps going back to the boxes. Eventually he gives up. 

He sets the first box on his bed. It’s been opened before, it has his clothing in it after all, and he needs his clothing. Scott unpacks all of _his_ things first, he’d very intentionally put Alex’s things on the bottom. It’s not a lot. Alex didn’t have a lot. From what Scott understood, Alex had sold most of what he owned to afford the move from New York to Nebraska when he found out about Scott. Most of Alex’s clothes had been been old and threadbare but Scott has kept the few shirts and pants and shoes that were still nice enough. And the dress. The white dress, the implications of which made Scott feel numb with grief. If only he’d known. If only Alex had known. 

He pulls the clothing out slowly, holding each item like it might disintegrate if he held onto them too tightly. The shirts and the pants he puts in with his own clothes, though he doubts he’ll ever wear them, but the dress… He does have closet space…

Scott looks over to the closet he shares with Kurt. Technically, half of it is his, though only Kurt’s using it right now. After a moment of thought Scott decides that, no, he can’t do that. He can’t display this part of Alex like that. This is _his_ Alex, and he doesn’t want to share. Scott carefully tucks Alex’s dress in the bottom drawer of his dresser with his pajamas and moves on to the next box. Shoes. Scott doesn’t even bother unboxing them, he just shoves the whole thing right into the closet. 

The last box is just assorted… stuff. Books, Scott’s spare binder, photos. This is the box that he’d kept the photos that he’d given to Mystique in. Scott quickly removes his binder and a few more incriminatingly queer items and stashes them in his underwear drawer. It’s not that Scott’s ashamed of being transsexual or that it seems that Alex might have been too, it’s that no one knows save for some of the teachers. 

With all the hecticness of everything since Apocalypse, Scott hadn’t had time to stop to think that he might need to ask to get a room alone. When he’d come back after the school had been rebuilt he’d found that he’d been assigned a room with Kurt Wagner who’s probably the most religious student at the school. As if on queue, Kurt bamfs into the room and Scott slams the drawer shut. 

 

You Need to Know

 

Twenty-three years. That’s a long time to spend as cosmic dust. The halls of the Xavier Institute are relatively empty as Armando makes his way through them. He’s not looking for anything in particular. He knows what he’d hoped to find coming back here. Alex, Sean, Raven, Hank. 

Mystique and Dr. McCoy, aren’t in though, according to the student who’d let him in. They’re on a field trip with a group of older students, as is Professor Xavier. When he’d asked about Alex, he’d been directed to the graveyard out back and when he’d asked about Sean, he was met with a blank stare. So he walks the halls looking for something, someone. There has to be some adult here somewhere. Though Armando supposes he wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t, all things considered. 

When he reaches the hall of class portraits he slows. Looks at each graduating class through the years. Some years are considerably smaller than others. He doesn’t recognize anyone. At least, not until the last frame. It’s different from the all the rest. 

Instead of one photo there are nine aged polaroids. There all in relatively good condition except for one that was badly creased, almost like it had been kept in a wallet. It's a picture of Armando. Darwin. It’s not the only photo of him in the nine, there’s one of him and Alex as well. As well as a selection of other single shots and group shots of the others. It almost feels wrong seeing these photos next to a series of class portraits. They hadn’t been students. They’d just been weapons.

Distantly Armando hears footsteps coming down the hall, then they stop.

“Um, can I help you?”

Armando turns to see a young man in red tinted glasses watching him. “Sorry. I probably should have left and come back when I was told Mystique and Hank weren’t here.”

“Are you looking for information about the school? I’m not a teacher, but I could find you some stuff.” 

“Nah, this… this was more of a social call.” Armando glances back at the polaroids on the wall. “I knew Mystique and Hank a long time ago. They’re really the only ones I’m here to see.” 

There was a moment of silence before the boy spoke again. “Are you… are you Darwin?” 

That gets Armando’s attention and he looks back at the boy. “Yeah, my name's Armando, but I used to go by Darwin.” 

“But that’s you in the pictures.” The boy gestures at the frame with the polaroids.

Armando nods. “Yeah, that’s me. Sorry, I guess I should have introduced myself.”

“No, no it’s fine, it’s just. My name’s Scott Summers. I’m Alex’s younger brother.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This could be a sort of sequel to [About Alex](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7051588), but it was written as a stand alone.


End file.
